No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

GEP SMART vs SAP Ariba Procurement comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
662
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (1st), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
GEP SMART
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Procurement Software (3rd), Contract Management Software (8th)
SAP Ariba Procurement
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Procurement Software (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Consultant at Accenture
Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions
Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.
it_user1709418 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Product Manager at a university with 10,001+ employees
Doesn't require a background in analytics to run reports
SMART has been helpful for sourcing and public bids. For regulatory purposes, our university posts bids, depending on the scope of the bid. We get a lot of value out of SMART's ability to post to a public site and have suppliers see that information, register in the tool, and participate. SMART features for collecting information and its timeline capabilities are highly useful. Then on the contract side, the reporting capabilities are the most valuable. Our use case focuses primarily on post-execution and lifecycle management, so it's essential to be able to report accurately especially compliance-related reports. SMART is easy to use, especially when reporting. It isn't designed for a hardcore analyst. You don't need to have a background in analytics to run reports, which is huge. I realized I hadn't touched too much on the spending side, but we use SMART for all spending analytics, and any commodity manager procurement professional can go in and run a spending report. That was a business decision to restrict who can run reports since that data can be exported and used. But the reporting capabilities are incredibly easy to use.
Argy Soudi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Procurement Consultant at Ps digital tenders limited
Has connected procurement and contracts efficiently while setup and support still require improvements
Support could be faster for critical issues with SAP Ariba Procurement. When patching happens and new releases come out, it can be hit and miss, though mostly it remains reliable. The on-time response is 99.9999%, but the main issue over the years has been with releases and patching. The initial setup of SAP Ariba Procurement is not straightforward. We have been trying to set it up for two and a half years for the council I work with. The personal account login is ready-made and allows landing page adjustments, but the overall software implementation can take forever and requires multiple teams to work on it.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I'd say there are new useful features that will definitely help us as we do more development in the near future."
"Improved Efficiency : Post RPA services, the efficiency and accuracy of the processes have increased tremendously and now the employees can focus more on important research and analysis work."
"Its ease of use is the most valuable feature. It is easy to train developers and find the right people, then use them to build the tool."
"This solution allows us to more fully automate our clients' specific tools."
"The graphical user interface (GUI) is very useful, since I don't know any coding languages. I have been able to be a developer with Automation Anywhere without knowing the technical background. I am a business user, and not needing the technical knowledge to use the system has been useful for me."
"It's easy to use for business users. Everything is good. It's a nice product."
"Through the software, we have been able to reduce the time that we spend on manual, repetitive tasks so that we can focus on activities that add value to the business or to our partners and customers."
"Co-Pilot is a valuable feature."
"The source-to-pay functionality has contributed to the digital transformation of our company."
"Through using GEP, we've been able to gain respect; the other departments in our company have come to rely upon us even more, and we have become a more trusted department within the company, among our peers, because we can speak to their spend at greater depth."
"It's user-friendly, in terms of the design of the tool."
"SMART has been helpful for sourcing and public bids. For regulatory purposes, our university posts bids, depending on the scope of the bid. We get a lot of value out of SMART's ability to post to a public site and have suppliers see that information, register in the tool, and participate."
"There are additional time savings in managing communications. If you have an open RFP and there are questions, you can manage all of the questions and answers in the thread inside that RFP. All the suppliers will get any notifications that you want them to get, and everything is within the body of the RFP so you don't have to worry about things in email, outside of the system."
"I love it because everything is done within the contract module. The previous tool that we had really acted more as a repository, whereas this is the lifecycle. Once a business owner gets to the point where they want to enter into a contractual relationship with a party, from that point, including the drafting of it through to the signature on it, it covers the lifecycle. It's from the beginning to the end to even the archiving. It's all done within the tool, including e-signature."
"I have seen that the sourcing process in GEP SMART is easier than in Oracle, SAP, etc."
"SMART's source-to-pay feature has helped us undergo a digital transformation."
"SAP Ariba's Sourcing cloud based solution has the greatest quantifiable ROI of its solutions, which typically occurs within the first six months after acquisition for most companies."
"Salesforce provides me with the ability to create reports based on various parameters."
"SAP Ariba Procurement is worth the money as a tool because it connects all departments in one."
"It is one of the best tools in the market."
"I like the guided buying features."
"SAP Ariba Procurement has impacted my organization in many important ways that have been prolonged benefits."
"We made custom enhancements to suite our business process."
"The best features are the ease of use and the workflow management that allows me to understand every step in the approval process so that I can forecast the time through my request and its approval."
 

Cons

"I haven't gone deep in the tool, but so far it looks good."
"Built-in HTML features are lagging in this solution, whereas in UiPath, they are very good."
"Automation Anywhere could add more tools to track the processes and ROI, so we can get a better understanding of the cost savings and compliance. We heavily track those metrics and make them available to the leadership for review."
"As a developer, I find Automation Anywhere's bot editor riddled with minor workflow issues that hinder productivity."
"Investment effect is almost none, unfortunately."
"The only reason I wouldn't rate it higher is because a COE Manager still not getting the full benefit from it and because the premium is a little bit expensive."
"I would like to have the ability to schedule bots by whichever one is available."
"Bots get disconnected from control rooms sometimes without any reason and this takes up a lot of time."
"One of the areas where they could do better is by creating more standard templates when it comes to IT cost."
"We had 50,000-plus contracts in Ntracts that had to be migrated to SMART. It was a big ask and it went horribly wrong, and we ended up having to do a second migration."
"While it captures all the fields and requirements, when any supplier updates or new supplier registration happens, then the supplier needs to update their bank details. Our IT team has made it so every half an hour the GEP SMART system will push the supplier to the Oracle Database. So, we have faced some problems, like bank details, etc. We addressed this issue with GEP. They are working on it to make bank details a mandatory field for any supplier and match our requirements. Their engineering team has taken up creating a customized process for us."
"Tech support could use a little bit more work."
"We definitely have some asks for enhancements. One of the big ones we'd like to see is what we call "drag-and-drop." If I have an email that I want to maintain in the SMART record for whatever reason — for example, it has supporting information in it — I would love to be able to just drop that into the notes and attachments section without having to save it as a PDF and then upload it."
"We had a lot of challenges and disagreements with SMART. It's been a long road, for sure, on the contract side. There is a little bit of pushback on their part when we need stuff done. Things aren't done very efficiently. I'm still waiting on some changes that were requested well over a year-and-a-half ago."
"There are no mechanisms for them to check up on how they refresh their data. So oftentimes, when we go into the tool and we don't see something, we alert them and they say, "Oh, the data hasn't been refreshed, so we'll go ahead and refresh it," and then what we're looking for pops up. We should not have to be the ones to tell them they need to refresh. There should be a mechanism in place for that."
"If our organization could use it as a full-fledged solution, then it would be valuable and give a return on investment. However, since we are not currently using it as a full-fledged solution, even facing some bugs and problems with the synchronization with some of the internal software, we are not able to use it in a full-fledged manner."
"The initial setup of SAP Ariba Procurement is not straightforward. We have been trying to set it up for two and a half years for the council I work with."
"Ariba Procurement tends to integrate best with other SAP products and is harder to work with if you have non-SAP products in your architecture."
"On the sourcing, it could be easier to import the documents you want, so if you want items to be bid on, it could be a bit easier to import that from a spreadsheet."
"SAP could make it easier for people to become SAP Ariba consultants within the SAP ecosystem."
"I would like to see more reports coming out of Ariba and more insights because it has to work in connection with SAP. So unless I run SAP and Ariba, I have to run. I am not able to see the utility of Ariba."
"Integration: SAP Ariba's integration has not matured yet, there is lot of scope for improvement in terms scenarios, error handling, data update intervals, etc."
"Gaining access to the sourcing project by the supplier needs improvement."
"During the initial setup process of SAP Ariba Procurement, there were a couple of challenges integrating the same system on our SAP platform."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our annual licensing costs are about $500,000."
"Subscription for Automation Anywhere (AA) is paid yearly."
"They're very flexible around pricing and licensing."
"In terms of pricing, this is a good product."
"They give us a good deal on the licensing because we bundle and customize things. If you ask to get a bulk business deal, you will receive more benefit. If you take other products from the suite, like IQ Bot, you can also receive a deal on the licensing."
"Based on what I've heard, it's costly, but I don't know much about its pricing."
"IQ Bots are very costly. It's not a sustainable bot for us as of now. We will look for better, alternate options for that."
"They are already coming out with a community license, which is really good. That's something that I wish to have."
"If our organization could use it as a full-fledged solution, then it would be valuable and give a return on investment. However, since we are not currently using it as a full-fledged solution, even facing some bugs and problems with the synchronization with some of the internal software, we are not able to use it in a full-fledged manner."
"My advice is to think wisely when it comes to estimating the number of licenses that you will require. If you settle on a number too early and you need additional ones, then the extra licenses might be quite expensive."
"The licensing cost depends on the customer."
"The license is expensive."
"It is an expensive solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Procurement Software solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business157
Midsize Enterprise81
Large Enterprise558
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with SAP Ariba Procurement?
At the moment, I don't have any specific reasons for improvement areas in SAP Ariba Procurement. The main improvement...
What is your primary use case for SAP Ariba Procurement?
I am a customer of this tool, and I use SAP Ariba Procurement for my regular procurement roles. This software is used...
What advice do you have for others considering SAP Ariba Procurement?
In managing supplier relationships and mitigating risks, SAP Ariba Procurement has a very strong role to play. It giv...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
SMART by GEP
Ariba Procurement
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Exxon Chevron Macys
Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT)
Find out what your peers are saying about GEP SMART vs. SAP Ariba Procurement and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.